Welcome to Patricia Youngquist, The Last Leaf Gardener's blog. I'm a photo-artist, bird-lover and urban gardener living in NYC. I'm also an author with a published book series, "Words In Our Beak." The stories are told by Cam, the bird pictured above. For info click on images 1-3 in the sidebar (L). My website (Patriciayoungquist.com.) mainly features my non-nature themed images (Black and White as well as Kaleidoscopic). Click on the 4th image in sidebar (L) to visit.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

"If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun." OR "Flowers, they just wanna have fun. . . "

Today is the last Saturday in November, and twenty-three days (including today) have passed since I "featured" Thomas Hood's poem in a blog entry on TLLG, about the "NO" in November which I'll post here again:

No sun - no moon!No morn - no noon -No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day.No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,No comfortable feel in any member -No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds -November!

The reason I've returned to this poem is that, fortunately, most of my fun loving things that I grow in my urban (New York City) terrace garden apparently decided to consider Katharine Hepburn's quote, "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun", and to stick around for at least the duration of November, therefore defying the "no flowers" norm (and perhaps an unwritten "rule") Hood cites in his aforementioned poem.

One of the ways in which this is evidenced is by the actions of my no-slave-to-fashion White Swan Echinacea Plant whom you may recall from previous blog entries on TLLG — including one which you may access by clicking here — and who can be seen in the photograph at the top of today's blog entry taken earlier today.

To me, perhaps because I love her, as only most mothers love their children, my White Swan friend, in the image posted above, seems to be rolling back her head in laughter, and, I must say I could even hear her singing, "Flowers, they Just Wanna Have Fun" to the tune of Cyndi Lauper's 1980's hit single, Girl's Just Wanna Have Fun, which is a song that usually makes even the most disgruntled person smile. This was certainly evidenced this past March at the Buenos Aires Airport, when Lauper sang her hit song during the time that she and hundreds of passengers were stranded there (to view a You Tube video on this event, click here).

In any event, the other flowers on my White Swan Echinacea Plant joined in the fun and one of them even curtsied as seen in the image posted below:

But if truth be told, the flowers on my Tropaelum majus (Nasturtium) plant, (including the one pictured below),

were singing "that's all they really want, flowers, they just wanna have fun, oh flowers just wanna have fun," earlier this week, when the flowers from my Helichrysum bracteatum (Strawflowers), gave the song, and my Tropaelum majus's flowers's rendition of it, their version of a "LIKE" button as seen in the images below:

And speaking of "fun", dear reader, I hope you had fun on Thanksgiving, and that you did not — unless you wanted to – be prey to the Black Friday hoopla!